XVIII explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Reality vs. Illusion

  Don Quixote perceives sheep as armies, insisting enchanters have transformed reality, while Sancho sees the plain truth.

• Madness and Sanity

  Don Quixote's delusion is starkly contrasted with Sancho's clear-eyed perception, highlighting the knight's persistent madness.

• Chivalry and Idealism

  Don Quixote's desire to aid the weak and win glory drives him to attack imagined armies, embodying chivalric idealism.

Characters to notice

• Don Quixote

  Insists the inn is enchanted, imagines sheep as armies, charges them, and is injured by shepherds' stones.

• Sancho Panza

  Recovers from blanketing, argues with Don Quixote about reality, warns him about the sheep, and laments his master's madness.

• Rocinante

  Carries Don Quixote during the charge against the sheep.

• Dapple

  Sancho's ass, which he worries about leaving before the imagined battle.

Key passages

• “I have now come to the conclusion, good Sancho, that this castle or inn is beyond a doubt enchanted, because those who have so atrociously diverted themselves with thee, what can they be but phantoms or beings of another world?”

  Don Quixote tells Sancho he believes the inn is enchanted and that the men who blanketed Sancho were phantoms.

  Don Quixote rationalizes Sancho's blanketing as enchantment rather than a real assault.

• “I would have avenged myself too if I could, whether I had been dubbed knight or not, but I could not; though for my part I am persuaded those who amused themselves with me were not phantoms or enchanted men, as your worship says, but men of flesh and bone like ourselves; and they all had their names, for I heard them name them when they were tossing me, and one was called Pedro Martinez, and another Tenorio Hernández, and the innkeeper, I heard, was called Juan Palomeque the Left-handed;”

  Sancho insists the men who tossed him were real people with names, not phantoms.

  Sancho provides concrete evidence to counter Don Quixote's enchantment theory.

• “This is the day, Sancho, on which will be seen the boon my fortune is reserving for me; this, I say, is the day on which as much as on any other shall be displayed the might of my arm, and on which I shall do deeds that shall remain written in the book of fame for all ages to come.”

  Don Quixote declares that today he will achieve great fame through his heroic deeds.

  Don Quixote's grandiloquent anticipation of glory before attacking the sheep.

• “Señor, devil take it if there's a sign of any man you talk of, knight or giant, in the whole thing; maybe it's all enchantment, like the phantoms last night.”

  Sancho says he sees no knights or giants, only sheep, and suggests it might be enchantment.

  Sancho ironically uses Don Quixote's own explanation of enchantment to describe the nonexistent armies.

• “Did I not tell you to come back, Señor Don Quixote; and that what you were going to attack were not armies but droves of sheep?”

  Sancho reminds Don Quixote that he warned him the 'armies' were only sheep.

  Sancho's exasperation after Don Quixote is injured by the shepherds.

• “That's how that thief of a sage, my enemy, can alter and falsify things; thou must know, Sancho, that it is a very easy matter for those of his sort to make us believe what they choose; and this malignant being who persecutes me, envious of the glory he knew I was to win in this battle, has turned the squadrons of the enemy into droves of sheep.”

  Don Quixote blames an enchanter for transforming the armies into sheep to rob him of glory.

  Don Quixote's refusal to accept reality, attributing the fiasco to a malicious enchanter.